France’s headscarf ban obscures real inequalities and transnational state maneuvers

Evidence

Asad concludes that important questions were not asked about the state’s reasons for finding the headscarf in schools incompatible with the practice of French citizenship. First, everyone who lives in France is not equal before the law. A number of Muslims from France’s former colonies live, work, and pay taxes in France but do not enjoy full citizenship rights. A focus on the veil as a practice antithetical to citizenship marks Muslims as undeserving of full citizenship rights (as incompletely modern peoples) and it obscures the legitimate grievances that French Muslims have concerning their unequal treatment. Second, the French state is ceding some of its national autonomy to the European Union as a result of the exigencies of a global economy. The control of migrant populations is a central aspect of these largely hidden manoeuvres, as is the installation of a citizen subject who is autonomous and without group loyalties or claims. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 373

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Compliments the immodesty-moral-panic article: the French headscarf ban is a contemporary instance of dress regulation as class/identity/political signaling, here encoded in secular citizenship discourse.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what concrete evidence exists that EU accession drove French migrant-control policies specifically, rather than domestic politics alone?